Counseling Hoboken; Mollie Busino, LCSW, Director of Mindful Power. Mollie has had extensive training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Rational Emotive Therapy, and Mindfulness. Her work focuses on Anxiety, Depression, Anger Management, Career Changes, OCD, Relationship, Dating Challenges, Insomnia, & Postpartum Depression and Anxiety.
The power of being grateful to others…
No matter your political or world-views, we all will agree that we have had feelings of helplessness and frustration during the last year. Some of these feelings have been a result of world happenings and some have been due to individuals’ reactions to current events.
In an email sent out a few months ago, I wrote about frustration and ways of managing it, which can be beneficial for that individual experiencing the feeling. However, what if we could have the ability to not only decrease our negative feelings but also impact others around them? This can be done by just a simple act of expressing gratitude toward others…
How many of you have had your hard work or thoughtful efforts been ignored? What did that do for you? Shift your mood for a minute? Add to the frustration you might be feeling at the moment?
Now- how many of you have had someone unexpectedly express gratitude for you or something you have done. What does that do for your mood?
There is no secret to the phenomenon that expressing gratitude towards others has a ripple effect…Research has also demonstrated that those who make an effort to express gratitude to others will decrease depressed feelings.
This seems like a no brainer- expressing gratitude toward others can lessen some of the negative feelings we have or continue to feel. But I don’t know if we always integrate it into our days as much as we could.
So here is the challenge: when you feel heightened levels of frustration, or sadness …Try one of these:
- Send a note of appreciation to a friend or colleague
- Engage in a (6 ft distanced) conversation with the barista or someone else in the service industry that you come in contact with and genuinely say “Thank you for their hard work that day”
- Send a gift of gratitude to a teacher
- Tell your significant other “thank you” for something supportive they have done recently
- Put a small token of gratitude in your mailbox for your mail carrier
- Tell your parents thank you for teaching you to be the person you have become
One last point – these efforts will always be more powerful if they are genuine (we express gratitude because we mean it rather than to increase the probability of having “good karma” come our way). This can be accomplished by taking a moment to realize all the contributions that various individuals make to your day…even if it is their “job“ it still has an impact that deserves to be acknowledged